2008: #32 – Exit Music (Ian Rankin)

Book #32 was Exit Music, the 17th book in Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series. The back of the book reads:

It’s late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence a high-level delegation of Russian businessmen is in town, keen to bring business to Scotland. The politicians and bankers who run Edinburgh are determined that the case should be closed quickly and clinically. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and his colleague DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that they are dealing with something more than a random attack – especially after a particularly nasty second killing. Meantime, a brutal and premeditated assault on local gangster ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty sees Rebus in the frame. Has the Inspector taken a step too far in tying up those loose ends? Only a few days shy of the end to his long, inglorious career, will Rebus even make it that far?

In this, what is supposed to be the last book in the Inspector Rebus series, Rebus is in the last two weeks before retirement. Now, I’ve only read one other book in this series (#12 The Falls), but these books seem to stand pretty well on their own. I liked this one better than the other I read, and I think part of that was that I listened to this one. The reader has a Scottish accent that takes some getting used to, but it helped me not get bogged down in the vernacular. The only real problem I had was that the mystery is starting to look like some sort of international conspiracy, so when you find out what actually happens, it’s a bit of a let down. But the ending makes up for it. Is this *really* the last?

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